With the great advances in mobile technology – sleek, powerful devices with great form factor, near ubiquitous connectivity, incredible communication speeds, and more – mobile time tracking applications are becoming very relevant to many of today’s businesses. The cost of these applications vary greatly as do their features and functionality so it is critical to have a complete understanding of your company’s issues, requirements, and objectives before you begin your search. An in-depth understanding of these items will go a long ways in helping you find the right solution.

But who should be driving these projects?

In construction, who heads a technology purchase will often be determined by the size of the company.

In smaller companies, it is often the owner of a business. They generally have a detailed knowledge of what is happening with their jobs including the employees working on those jobs. An owner will often be cognizant of employees reporting to work late or leaving early. Based on studies conducted by the American Payroll Association, employee time misappropriation (e.g. long lunches, early departures, late arrivals) can account for up to 4.08 hours per week. The owners pays the salaries, and if they can reduce their total payroll or get more production out of the same payroll, then they generally have great motivation to seek out a remote time tracking application that can accomplish either or both.

In larger entities, whoever is experiencing the most “pain” will typically be the driving force behind a software or technology purchase.

It might be a payroll administrator responsible for processing payroll on a very tight weekly schedule. This person frequently has to deal with timesheets called in, faxed in, or brought in at the end of the week and has just a couple of days to get them manually entered into the payroll or accounting system and transformed into payroll checks or deposits. Their job can be made even more difficult when the timesheets are late, illegible, or in some cases, missing altogether. And further complications arise when unions and/or overtime are involved. According to certain industry estimates, the rate of manual time card computation error is 1% to 8% of an annual payroll. Even at 1%, this can represent a relatively large amount of waste.

Sometimes, operations personnel will be the ones seeking relief from various headaches in the field.

Just the handling of paper timesheets alone can be very cumbersome and annoying. They normally have to be folded up, attached to a clipboard of some type, or housed in a plastic or metal case, and carried around or kept nearby at all times. Some companies give their foremen blank timesheets and have them fill out the employees, hours, jobs, cost codes, pay codes, and other data at the beginning of each week. Other companies will create timesheets with the latest job and employee data, but the foremen will either have to visit the office to pick them up, or have the timesheets faxed or scanned and emailed to them. Either situation involves unnecessary additional administrative work.

Sometimes, just the sheer number of jobs, employees, equipment, tasks, and other data can be overwhelming for the field foremen or project managers. Allocating the number of hours for each employee and piece of equipment to each job and task on each day on top of all their operations responsibilities can often be a daunting undertaking. And this is usually done at the end of the day which could call into question, the accuracy of the data.

It is not uncommon in big companies, where the driving force emanates from the executive branch, to utilize a technical specialist. The informed executive who understands the large potential benefits resulting from increased productivity and cost savings that a mobile time clock system offers, will commonly assign the project to a trusted IT staff manager or employee. There may not be any real or perceived “pain” involved, but this should allow the designated project manager to do an objective and unbiased study. An IT staff member should be very familiar with the latest technology including devices, operating systems, communication methods, database infrastructures, and more.

Getting the blessing of your finance or accounting department is highly recommended. The finance people are usually great at doing a ROI study to check the payoff of your various mobile time tracking solutions. This will allow you to get a good feel for what kind of productivity and cost benefits you can expect and at what cost.

Finally, the best situation of all, involves an upgrade based on a company-wide commitment. The chances for a smooth implementation and successful use of a mobile time tracking application are significantly greater when everyone has “buy in” to the project. This should also significantly reduce the normal resistance to a project of this nature.

Our sales executives have worked with all types of project drivers and will work with you to determine if mJob is the right solution. Above all, we want happy customers who use mJob to make their jobs easier every day. We want customers who will continue to bring us innovative new ideas so that we can remain Construction’s most advanced mobile time tracking solution. Let us know if we can help.